Before Pru could tell her to leave, the ultrasound tech, a gray-haired woman named Rose, came in and squeezed gel onto Pru’s stomach. Mandy pulled her chair closer and, in a suddenly sweet voice, announced that she was the baby’s real mother and Pru was her surrogate. They didn’t advertise it, she said, because of the stigma. Rose froze with the wand in her hand and looked from one woman to the other.
Pru sat up, gel smeared across her stomach, and said that was a lie, that Mandy was her sister-in-law and had no business there. Mandy rested a hand on Rose’s arm and said Pru got confused sometimes, that surrogates could get very attached. Then she wondered aloud whether someone that emotional should be carrying a child at all. Rose practically ran out to find the office manager, and the moment the door closed, Mandy dropped the act and hissed that Pru hadn’t accomplished anything, only gotten lucky.
Security walked Mandy out while she played the wounded relative who’d only wanted to help. Barry was furious when Pru called him from the car, and he phoned his mother straight away. Her answer was that Mandy just wanted to be involved and they were breaking her heart by shutting her out. Two days later she turned up at their door uninvited and lectured Pru about skipped appointments, missed vitamins, and fast food, all supposedly reported by Mandy. Barry listened for about thirty seconds, told her every word was a lie, and walked her to the door. The look his mother gave Pru on the way out made it clear who she blamed, and it wasn’t her daughter.
An Elbow, a Plane Ticket, and Thirty Strangers
The following Sunday was Barry’s father’s birthday dinner. Barry didn’t want to go, but Pru talked him into it, hoping that seeing them happy together might help his mother understand and that Mandy would behave in public. She was wrong on both counts. Mandy sat directly across from her and spent half the meal dropping remarks about women who steal what doesn’t belong to them, and Pru ignored every one.
Then the main course arrived. Mandy stood to grab a dish from the middle of the table, stretched across toward Pru, and drove her elbow straight into Pru’s stomach. It wasn’t a brush or a bump. Pru doubled over, her first thought only whether the baby was okay, and Mandy said, sweet as sugar, “Oops. I’m so clumsy.”
Pru saw the smirk when she looked up. She hurried to the bathroom, found no bleeding, and came back to find Barry arguing in whispers with his mother, who insisted it was an accident. Barry said he’d watched it happen. When his father reminded him it was his birthday, Barry said he should have raised a daughter who doesn’t hit pregnant women at dinner. On the way out he told Mandy she was banned from his wife’s life, and she laughed and said he couldn’t keep her away forever.
For a few days things were calm. Barry worked from home and screened calls, and Pru painted the nursery a soft yellow because they wanted the gender to be a surprise. Then he mentioned a three-day work trip to Chicago that he’d planned for months. He offered to cancel, but Pru refused to become someone who couldn’t function without her husband within arm’s reach.
About four hours after his flight left, Pru came home from the grocery store and counted six cars lining her street. Inside were at least thirty women she’d never met, holding champagne glasses beneath balloons and a banner that read baby shower, with Mandy in the middle, arms spread wide. “Surprise!” she shouted. She had planned it for weeks, apparently, while Barry was busy setting boundaries.
Mandy took the grocery bags out of Pru’s hands and steered her into a ribbon-covered chair, then made her open gifts one by one while she narrated. The onesie was a size 2T, far too big for a newborn. The blanket carried an old stain, the bottles belonged to a brand that had been recalled months earlier, and every item was either wrong, used, or unsafe. When Pru said she was just tired, Mandy told the room that Pru had been having episodes and paranoid thoughts, that she’d even accused Mandy of trying to steal her baby.
Pru pulled her hands free, knocked the chair over, and told everyone to get out. When Mandy said in her most concerned voice that this was exactly what she meant, Pru screamed at her to shut up, then threw a gift box that hit the wall. The guests scattered, and one older woman pressed a tissue into her hand and told her not to be alone. Once the house emptied, Mandy smiled for real. She had thirty witnesses to Pru’s breakdown, she said, and it was all on video, and when everyone agreed Pru wasn’t fit to be a mother, she’d be waiting with a real home for the baby.
Pru cried on the couch until she couldn’t breathe, then waited three hours for Barry to call back. When she finally told him everything, he said two words: “I’m coming home.”